Previews

Tales of Rebirth

Spiffy:

Inomata Mutsumi returns; improved battle system.

Iffy:

Can it advance the series' gameplay? Will it make it West?

Coming off what could arguably be the best installment in the Tales series -- Tales of Symphonia -- Namco has a lot to live up to with Tales of Rebirth, the newest installment in its long-running RPG series. We were anxious to see how this title was shaping up. From the moment we started playing, it was clear that Rebirth will be a very different beast.

Famed anime artist and character designer Inomata Mutsumi (Tales of Destiny, Windaria, LEDA) has returned from a brief respite to again provide the character designs for Rebirth. Her wispy, dreamlike art style has a very distinctive look that is reflected in the game's graphics.

In a move that will either delight or disappoint, Namco has decided to return to traditional sprite-based characters and enemy graphics, as opposed to the cel-shaded polygon characters of Symphonia. While the characters are flat 2D sprites, the backgrounds of city and battle screens are composed in 3D in real-time, and the map screen is entirely polygonal.

We started off the special limited demo of Rebirth at TGS with the heroine, Claire, trapped within a block of ice. After a brief one-on-one duel between the hero Veigue and Mao, a young tonfa-wielding boy, Claire was soon freed from the ice with the use of fire magic. Thus, our collected four-person party went along, with the cat-like Gajuma warrior Eugene in tow, to explore the towns and the overworld. The town environment was large, with detailed backdrops and many other NPC characters going about and doing their daily business. We didn't spend too much time here, though, as we wanted to get a taste of battle firsthand.